Captain’s Corner: Jim Lemke

The Tampa Bay Times

Spring is Kicking Off

Times Correspondent Capt. Jim Lemke

With the water starting to heat up in the late mornings and early afternoons you might want to start looking around the river and creek mouths in the upper and lower bay areas for fish.

With the water temperature in the mid 70’s the morning top water bite has been great on the bay area flats as the sun is coming up with some nice gator Trout, Redfish and even a few Snook. As the sun gets higher in the sky I start heading to the bay area flat’s like the Weedon Island or the South Shore and fish the Mangroves for Snook and out on the flat for Redfish depending on the tide. The bridge pilings or the rock piles under the bridges and bay area reefs. I fish for Mango Snappers, Sheephead, Pompano, and a lot more types of fish you can catch under the bridges. In the deeper areas of the bay the Mackerel and Kingfish along with a few Bluefish starting to show up in good numbers. For the guy’s throwing artificials and fly the best baits I like throwing are white jerk baits and for flies a Clouser minnow or shrimp patterns.

No matter when you can go fishing there is a way to stay cool and get some great spring fishing in. The best part of it you can use your flats rods to do it all. You just need to change hooks or leader size depending where you are fishing. Capt Jim Lemke charters out of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater and can be reached at (813) 917-4989 and at captjimlemke@gmail.com or on his website www.lighttackleadventures.com